Obama Buys More Display Ads Than Romney, And In More Places

Of the presidential contenders, President Obama's reelection campaign has adopted the more broad-based display ad strategy in the campaign's final two months. In analysis shared with AdExchanger, analytics firm Moat finds Obama's campaign placed 10x the volume of display ads that Romney's did, an estimate that is consistent with FEC data on Obama's digital ad investment -- which places Obama's digital spend at anywhere between four and ten times that of Romney's.

Also the Obama team's media strategy differs substantially from Romney's. AdWeek covered some of Moat's numbers last week (Read it), noting the Romney campaign shrank the number of properties in its digital ad buys considerably from September to October, but increased impression volume during that time by 400%.

The chart below shows Moat spotted Romney ads on Google AdSense in about 44% of measured impressions and Lotame on another 38%. Obama meanwhile spread its spend more broadly across sites and buying platforms. Yahoo's Genome audience platform commanded 34% of Obama impressions observed by Moat, but the remaining 66% of spend was distributed more widely. Ten companies including Advertising.com, Tribal Fusion, and AppNexus captured the remainder of its display ad budget. Moat also noted Obama's direct buys included placements on NYTimes.com, Oprah.com, Cnet.com, and ComedyCentral.com.